Introduction

Staging Dioramas is an ongoing curatorial research project by Stefan Aue, Jana Eske and Jessica Páez. Founded in 2015, it investigates methods of knowledge and meaning production through constellations of representation. The focus is on exhibition displays, in particular the diorama in ethnographic and natural history museums.

As a form of museum display that has a long history and is still in use all over the world, the diorama claims to depict reality, but in doing so it also shows what should be understood as reality. Additionally it presents particular orders and hierarchies of knowledge, which produce a certain view of the world in the eye of the beholder.​In the project Staging Dioramasinherent conflicts, hierarchies and power structures are revealed through re-staging the diorama’s parameters of knowledge production in a variety of different artistic, academic and institutional contexts and forms. In laying out these structures in workshops, conferences, exhibitions and interventions, the ability to change the way of looking at dioramas can be developed and a re-evalutation of institutional functions becomes visible.

Image: American Museum of Natural History New York, Photo: Jessica Páez